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Friday, February 15, 2013

System Overhaul

Today I want to talk about my cousin. She is currently
appearing for her final board exams this month. She has come a long way.

My cousin had
suffered from Schizophrenia in her early teens and it was heart-breaking to
experience as a family. After several visits to the therapist and taking medicine
which weakened her in a way that was just cruel…she made it through. I’m going
to be honest; I don’t know exactly what it’s like because we don’t discuss it
in details. But she is very conscientious. She refrains from watching movies
even today because she is scared that it might be a trigger for relapse. Where
teenagers, hang out and just have fun, my sister is very cautious in selecting
the occasions she hangs out with her friends in. Some of her friends are
supportive of her condition but I’m sad to say that it’s been quite difficult
for her in being accepted just the way she is.

Sometimes I have myself lost patience in dealing with her
and for that I am regretful. Why am I writing about her now? It has to do with
her exams. The first of her board exams started yesterday. And she came home
crying. Because she had a panic attack in the examination hall. She was sad
because she had left out a question worth 20 marks in her paper. This paper was
not an important one. But I have something to say about the tremendous
hullabaloo and competition that has evolved in our education system. The kind
where you getting accepted in the college of your choice is based on how (many
decimals) close you’ve hit the hundred mark. If we are really expected to be
this perfect so early on in our lives, then I truly don’t understand the
aspirations and dreams we want the next generation to grow up with. We are not
nurturing human beings, more like a conveyor belt full of assembled robots
manufactured to meet the system’s needs.

The stress is high for people in general, but for special
individuals like my cousin, it gets beyond acceptable. It is affecting her
confidence, her self-esteem and everything in between. She thinks over
everything that is said to her, trying to find derogatory jibes directed to
her, when there are none. That’s how lowly she has begun to think of herself.
Because she’s scared that she will mess up all her papers that are to follow. She
is scared about pretty much anything and everything these days.

At this point there is little I can do but pray. There is
little my cousin can do but cope. And I sincerely hope that times change and
marks become obsolete. Because they are just triple or double digits which
begin to mean very little when you start weighing a person’s sense of
well-being, self-respect and love.